Tuesday, July 05, 2005

UUs Been There

A commenter on the UCC initial post notes that this same-sex-marriage stuff is old news to UUs. You can check out Unitarian Universalist-related gay rights (including marriage-equality) history here.

The UCC is a lot bigger and many people pay attention to self-identified Christians. While Garrison Keillor, Doonesbury, Kudzu and even UUs have a lot of fun joking about the denomination, folks tend to take even liberal mainline Protestents more seriously.

Truth is, UUs are almost always out there first on justice and equality issues. They did the same-sex marriage resolution nine years ago. However, that surprised almost no one.

Now if the United Methodists or Southern Baptists could see the light, that would be newsworthy

4 comments:

Rieux
said...

I hope it was and is evident that my previous comment was delivered with a smile! (And that it was prompted only by the OP's similar "give 'em a run for their title" line.) I'm entirely happy about the UCC news; they're certainly welcome at the pro-gay shindig, and their denominational decision this week is not at all a ho-hum thing.

You're also clearly right that people tend to pay more attention to what a mainline Protestant denomination does than to what we weirdo UUs do. That I'm not so happy about, but oh well.

There are quite a few of us UUS, particularly in New England, who don't understand why we don't have the millions of members to back up our good sense, good works, and good times.

Then again:

1) UUs are a very white, intellectual bunch in the main.2) Our music is far from the best.3) We have too few powerful preachers.4) We lack the ritual, trappings and simple dogma that many people go to church expecting.

Does that mean we don't have the entertainment quotient to bring in the crowds?

Oh, yes, and UUs don't proselytize or otherwise recruit.

Maybe that makes the UUA the handcrafted, the cabinetmakers to the mainline's IKEA, eh?

Well the UU church is awesome, but it is not really Protestant or specifically Christian (you could be a humanist agnostic, a wiccan, or a buddhist and be UU). That is the big difference. I mean most Neo-Pagans have performed SSM's for years, and while wonderful, just is not the same as a large Protestant denomination, even if of liberal theology, officially doing the same.